Aaron's 'Birthdate', Summer Days, Allergies, Wheezy Boy

Sarah had her kindergarten graduation last week.  I can't believe my little girl will be in all day school in the fall.  I can't think about it too much because it makes me sad, but I know she will love it.  They had a graduation program and played a movie about all the activities they had done that year in kindergarten.  They asked each child what they wanted to be when they grow up and Sarah said that she wanted to have kids and to be a mom when she grew up.  

They sang a few songs with actions that were really cute.

 Each child got an award.  Sarah's award was the Almond Joy award because she was such a joyful learner every day.  Sarah really does love school.

 After her graduation we were walking home when Sarah's sandal broke.  Oh it was quite traumatic and sad by the way Sarah cried about it.  I promised her if she stopped crying we could get her a new pair of sandals.  That seemed to appease her so she stopped her crying.  We went sandal shopping a few hours later, however, in that few hours Sarah had been playing outside.  They have just cut the alfalfa field by us and it seems that Sarah is quite allergic.  Her eyes puffed up, she was incredibly sneezy and she had copious amounts of snot pouring out of her nose--poor thing.  Even after medicating her with Allegra her eyes were still puffy and itchy.

I had to keep assuring everyone at the shoe store that she did not have pink eye.  It took her a bit to find the most perfect sandals, but she now proudly wears her new sandals.  Speaking of allergies the last two months have been hard allergy wise on my family.  All the kids (Aaron included) have needed allergy meds every day.  Even with giving allergy meds to Daniel he had a pretty bad asthma flair up last week because of the pollen in the air.  With his asthma flair up we had to break out the nebulizer and albuteral treatments every four hours because he turned into Mr. Wheezy boy and his rescue inhaler was not even touching the wheezing.  After 24 hours of nebulizer treatments it was time for his appointment with the allergist.  We have to see the allergist every four days for his milk oral imunotherapy (OIT).   They also check his lung function to make sure his asthma is under control so they can increase his milk dose.  When they went to check his lung function during the visit the results were abysmal which was not surprising because he had been struggling to breath with chest retractions and everything for almost 24 hours beforehand.  The allergist has given us his personal cell phone number and asks us to call or text with any question or problem we have.  However, since we have been through asthma flair ups before we didn't think it was too urgent to bug the doctor about.  Boy was I WRONG.  When the allergist saw Daniel's lung function results and heard that he has been needing nebulizer treatments she went off on me.  She told me in not so many words that the number one failure of the OIT treatment was uncontrolled asthma.  She also said that if the rescue inhaler was not working his asthma was NOT under control and that I needed to let them know ASAP.  She asked why I had not texted blah, blah, blah.  Anyway, I felt horrible.  I now know that any sign of an asthma attack I need to text the doctor ASAP.  Daniel was not able to increase his milk dose for that day and he had to be put on prednisone (a steroid) for four days to get things under control.  Well I learned my lesson.  Not being able to increase his milk dose set back the therapy another week, however, even with that setback if everything else goes smoothly Daniel will hopefully finish the OIT for milk by the end of September.  Wahoo!!  The end is in sight--hopefully we can keep the asthma under control until then.  I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I am hoping that Daniel will be able to have an ice cream cake for his birthday on Sept. 30.  Keeping my fingers crossed!!

It was Aaron's birthday Saturday.  I surprised him by planning a night away.  G&G T were nice enough to watch the kids for overnight so Aaron and I could have a fun, uninterrupted date.  Aaron didn't know about anything before hand so when he came home from work and saw all the kids and their gear packed up in the Suburban he knew we were going to do something fun.  We drove down and dropped off the kids at G&G T's house then came back up to Ogden.  We had won some rock climbing passes about a year ago and finally got a chance to use them.  I didn't tell Aaron anything until we showed up at the rock climbing center.  He was pretty surprised.  We climbed and climbed until we couldn't grip the handles anymore.  Climbing is actually a pretty exhausting activity!!

 We belayed each other so we couldn't climb at the same time, but we still had fun.

 After climbing we went to see a movie.  It has been a while since we have had the chance to see a movie that wasn't kid related.  We saw Divergent and it was really good.  I had read the book series and the movie followed the book pretty closely.  Here we are waiting for the movie to start:

 The next morning I had planned a temple trip, however, both of us ended up sleeping in until 9--something that NEVER happens.  Since a temple visit was now out of the question we went and got a french toast breakfast at Kneaders (YUM!!) and then went and played racquetball up on base.  Neither one of us are very good at racquetball, but Aaron is better than I am.  We played 5 games and Aaron won 4 of them.  Yes, I am pretty bad.  After that it was time to pick up the kidlets.  Oh it was so nice to get a break even if it was only for 20 hours total.  We had lots of fun and Aaron enjoyed the surprise.

G&G T had fun with the kids.  They took them to a really neat park by their house and they also went to All-A-Dollar (or Aller-Doller which is what all my kids call it) where they were each given two dollars to spend on whatever they wanted to get.  Matthew was so excited for Aaron's birthday that he used one of his dollars to by him a present--which was a patriotic flag banner.  Who knows maybe we could even use it for Martin Luther King Day since Matthew always asks where our decorations are for that day.  Oh Matthew is a funny boy.  Sunday I let Aaron pick his birthday dinner that I would cook for him.  He chose chicken fried steak with smashed potatoes, corn and country gravy.  We haven't had that in such a long time that the kids didn't know what it was.  They sure ate it all up, though.  Afterward we sang happy birthday, had cake and Aaron opened his presents.

 Monday it was back to reality and the FIRST DAY OF SUMMER!!!  The city isn't doing the recreation program Kids in the Park this year so we have to come up with our own fun instead.  There are a few movie theaters offering kids' movies during the summer so I bought some passes and we tried it out yesterday.  We tried to get a 6 person selfie picture, but it was pretty hard.  This was the best one we got:

 After the movie How to Train Your Dragon we headed over to the splash pad for a few hours:

 It was a lot of fun.

I was out weeding the backyard when Matthew followed me outside.  I was in the backyard and Matthew happened to see our across the street neighbors in their front yard and couldn't resist and chance to talk.  This kid is Mr. Friendly to everyone.  All of our neighbors all know Matthew because Mr. Friendly really loves chatting it up with everyone around the neighborhood whether he knows them or not.  Now this particular neighbor is the guy that works for Union Pacific Railroad that always gives Matthew train related things.  He was just waiting for Matthew to come chat it up with him to give him the newest Union Pacific thing which this time was a lantern.  Oh Matthew was so excited.  I was in the backyard and could still hear his screams of joy from across the street.  He ran all over and then came to show me the newest Union Pacific item he added to his collection.  We have the nicest neighbors.  He made Matthew's week for sure!!

Today was the second day of summer, but we couldn't go out and about because the suburban's backseat passenger door lock was broken and wouldn't unlock.  Aaron had to fix it, but it took a lot of the morning to do it so we just had a relaxing day at home.  When it was done being fixed Aaron went to work and I had to run to the grocery store.  While I was there I was in the produce section picking out carrots.  There was an older lady (maybe in her 80s) in a motorized cart waiting for someone.  When she saw me and the kids (we were very noticable to say teh least) she asked Matthew, "So you like carrots?"  Matthew emphatically said no and then he asked her why she was riding in the motorized cart.  She started giving him an answer when his internal must push buttons alarm went off.  The poor lady wasn't even done with her short explanation when Matthew lunged at her cart and revved the gas.  Wow the cart almost did a wheelie and then lunged ahead a few feet before I could pull Matthew away.  I apologized a ton and she was so nice.  She was more worried about running over Sarah and Noah than she was about herself.  I made sure she was ok and then we quickly got away from the cart before Matthew could do it again.  Oh my goodness I don't know what to do with this boy sometimes!!!!